Information Builders Announces Award Winners

• 05/15/2001

Information Builders announced the winners of its new i-business awards: Philips Semiconductor, Canadian National Railways (CN Rail) and the City of Richmond, British Columbia. Information Builders will honor these clients at its Summit 2001 Conference to be held next week in Orlando. All the awardees winning applications were created using Information Builders' WebFOCUS technology.

Philips Semiconductor, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, received the i-business award for the fastest time to market of its "CLASS (SAP) Project" application. The company needed to develop a global SAP project that would allow all users in the company to use one ERP system. Philips completed the project in 10 weeks, with only three people designing, developing, testeding and migrating 359,000 legacy reports into WebFOCUS reports. These reports serve 300 current global users in North America, Asia and Europe.

CN Rail was recognized for its "Chargeable Services" application. The application will analyze invoices, adjustments and accounts receivables in order to provide statistical information about the services rendered. Not only does this application provide the necessary tools required to track the services and collections, it also provides information about customers' rankings, stations and routes. The application is accessible on CN Rail's intranet directly or via the SAP Manager's Desktop. CN Rail estimates the long-term ROI to be a potential gain of $100 million a year from improved billing and collections.

The award for the most innovative use of technology went to the City of Richmond, British Columbia. It is the first Information Builders customer to deploy the WebFOCUS and AvantGo technologies together in a single mobile application. The "Mobile Monitoring for Municipalities" application allows the City of Richmond's Engineering and Public Works Department to respond to alerts, monitor trends and track pump status via their wireless devices. This use of intranet and field-based PDA technology enables city staff to guide development and emergency response efforts. The City officials also use the system to formulate long-range strategies in infrastructure planning, commercial and residential development, pump station design and preventative maintenance.

Award winners were selected by a committee that included industry analysts and Information Builders' staff. The committee judged applicants on the design of the project, and how it changes and improves peoples' lives, improves prospects for the future and helps define the term "i-business." Entrants were also judged on specific business benefits and how Information Builders' products/services helped them achieve their goals.